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Laurens CPW Receives National Safety and Reliability Certification
Laurens, SC – The American Public Power Association (APPA) recently awarded the Reliable Public Power Provider (RP3) Platinum Award to the Laurens Commission of Public Works (CPW) for its outstanding achievement in providing safe and reliable electricity to its customers.
The CPW is currently one of only one hundred and forty four public power utilities in the United States and one of only four utilities in South Carolina to receive this designation.
The RP3 program measures a utility's performance in four specific areas of proficiency—reliability, safety, training and system improvements.
The CPW uses several different indices to track its reliability and demonstrates an outstanding record in each compared to other national and surrounding utilities. The CPW also participates in a mutual aid program with other utilities across the state and nation. This program provides repair and restoration assistance should a catastrophic outage event occur. This availability of additional manpower and service vehicles can dramatically shorten the duration of widespread outages, ensuring customers will be without service for the shortest possible time.
In the safety category, the CPW was judged on its use of employee safety manuals, monthly employee safety meetings, refresher training courses, audio-visual training materials, certified trainers, and other safe work practices.
CPW Electric Operations Department utilizes a variety of traditional and non-traditional training opportunities, including conferences and workshops, webinars, in-house training sessions, and professional development courses to ensure line workers, supervisors, tree-trimmers, construction crews and all other key personnel will remain current regarding state-of-the-art efficient work techniques and technology.
System improvement efforts also won high marks for the CPW. The CPW conducts a variety of both routine and special infrastructure improvement projects aimed at enhancing system efficiency, reliability and safety. These include an on-going tree trimming and system inspection/ maintenance program, an overhead-to-underground line conversion project, and an upgrade of the utility's Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system.
"A great deal of work went into the rigorous application process. The APPA review panel required very detailed explanations and supporting documentation for every aspect of the program. While this designation is primarily for the Electric Operations Department, every department at the CPW is focused on these four core areas: reliability, safety, training and system improvements. I am very proud of all of our employees and their efforts to have received this important designation on our first attempt," said Dale Satterfield, CPW General Manager.
